let's pretend i'm a man
by Charis M
Summary: "Diminished seems paltry, and yet it is the word he clings to now, faced with a reality he cannot bear laid out stark in lines of ink on a page." Athos, falling apart and falling away, after the end. [oneshot; post-canon]


**let's pretend i'm a man  
**

 _Problems with having a suggestible brain: you enable yourself. That's the only possible excuse I have for this ficlet. Thanks to the wonderful Swellie for handholding and sanity-checking. Title from King 810′s "Devil Don't Cry"._

 _Post-S3, with vague spoilers for the whole thing and attendant canon compliance.  
_

* * *

 _The world seemed diminished without you,_ she had told him years before, of the time that she had thought him dead, and he had imagined he understood; had he not lived five years thinking her dead, gone, condemned by his word? He had imagined he understood, but the words on the page blur and the sounds around him fade and as he grips the back of the chair to steady himself he thinks – a strangely steady realisation in the midst of this sudden welter of emotions – that he could not have dreamed this feeling, even in the worst of his nightmares. Diminished seems paltry, and yet it is the word he clings to now, faced with a reality he cannot bear laid out stark in lines of ink on a page.

"Athos?"

Her voice skitters against nerves suddenly raw and exposed, an almost tangible reminder of all of his guilt and failings. If he had remembered who he was, held to his honour – if he hadn't gone, hadn't left, had believed as he should have all those years ago – then surely things would have been different, and he would not be standing here feeling as if his heart has been ripped from his chest. It is suddenly impossible to breathe.

"Athos –" a hand, gentle on his arm, and he shudders convulsively away, unable to bear touch in this moment. She doesn't reach for him again, but her eyes meet his, hurt and puzzled. "What's wrong?"

He cannot speak any more than he can breathe, and so he thrusts the letter at her. When she takes it he curls that hand into a fist at his side, lets his nails bite into his palm, lets the pain be an anchor to pull him back from the edge of the chasm that yawns before him. It would be easy to fall, to drown, but right now that will avail him nothing and he needs to think.

Paris. He has to get to Paris, has to find Porthos, has to _know_ –

"You're leaving," Sylvie says, the paper rustling as she sets it down on the table, and it's a quiet statement with nothing of a question to it.

He doesn't realise he has begun to move towards the door while she was reading until her words stop him. When he opens his mouth nothing comes out; he closes it, swallows, tries again. "Yes."

She's still looking at him, dark eyes steady and as unreadable as her expression. "You're not coming back."

He hadn't so much as considered that possibility until her words, but now that she's said it he realises she's right. He can't; not after this. No matter how he has told himself he's changed, he's still the same man who solved his problems by running away from them, and leaving Paris with her months ago has played them both – them all – ill. "I did love you," he says, apology and answer alike, and she shakes her head.

"You loved the idea of me; you always loved her more." The smile that curves her mouth equal parts of bitter and fond. And, when he still falters, "It was plain on your face the moment you read that letter, but I've known it longer. Go, Athos. This isn't where either of us wants to be."

There are so many things he could say to that – so many things he wants to say, apologies and promises and a thousand other words that stick in his throat and choke him – but in the end he just nods acknowledgement and gratitude and does as bidden, because she's right. His head and his heart are already leagues away; it's time he followed them back.

\- x -

Somewhere along the ride he finds a wineskin, because if he is certain of only one thing in this moment it is that he cannot face this reality sober. And somewhere along the ride one becomes a second, and a third, and by the time he clatters into the garrison two days later the world's begun to mercifully blur around the edges. It doesn't make him any less steady as he reins up in the middle of the yard, ignoring the shouts of confusion and alarm from the cadets as he pushes through them and storms his way up the stairs. He doesn't know where Porthos is now, but d'Artagnan should be here, and d'Artagnan should know, and –

D'Artagnan looks up alarmed as the door slams open, but Athos scarcely notices him, when Porthos is standing at the other side of the table. All the pain and anger that have been building since he received the letter coalesce into white-hot fury, and before he even knows what he's done his fist is crashing into Porthos' face with a sickening crunch. He's yelling, though he can't make out his own words over the blood thundering in his ears, and Porthos is sprawled on the floor with both hands pressed to his bloodied nose, and d'Artagnan is pulling him off the other man, jerking Athos' hands almost painfully behind his back.

"– d's name are you doing?!" d'Artagnan is yelling in his ear, strident demand, and Athos subsides as it becomes clear he's not going to be fighting free of that grip.

"Nothing less than he deserves," he growls.

Porthos pushes up on his elbows, struggles into a seated position. His eyes flick up, must be meeting d'Artagnan's before they return to him, and there's enough apologetic sorrow there that Athos almost feels guilty for hitting him now that the rage is fading. But Porthos says nothing as he tries to staunch the blood, and d'Artagnan's breath comes out in an aggrieved sigh. "Why did you come back, Athos? Where's Sylvie? Why are you –?"

"I told him," Porthos cuts him off.

The silence which follows is deafening. He can only imagine, as d'Artagnan's grip on his wrists slackens, what the younger man is thinking. It makes him acutely aware of how little he knows of what has transpired in Paris since his departure; their letters had only told him so much, and faced with this now he finds himself wondering how much has changed. If he is different (and god, he is, enough that he scarcely knows himself sometimes), then surely they must have changed as well.

"Sylvie's not here," he says to the other question, because it's safe – because he can answer that without feeling the anguished emptiness twist inside him. "She's – we're done." And it should hurt but it doesn't, or if it does then the pain is nothing next to Anne – god, _Anne_ – and he takes a ragged breath, forces down the ache, because he needs answers and to have enough presence of mind to hear them. It would be so easy to shatter, but he can't. Not yet. Not until he knows. "Porthos."

"She went across the border – chasin' rumours in Barcelona. It was supposed to be quiet. But she was weeks late reporting back, and when we sent someone else down to check …" The compassion in his gaze is almost painful, but though he can turn away from it he can't escape the grim finality of the words. "They found her out, Athos. She's –"

" _Dead_ ," he finishes harshly when Porthos falters. Dead, and it's as if the word releases the floodgates because he staggers, sways – and the next he knows he's on the floor, slumped against the desk, face wet with undignified tears and throat tight and raw and his brothers are there with him, one on either side, anchoring him in the storm of grief.

\- x -

The temptation to seek oblivion is almost overwhelming, enough that for a brief time he succumbs. He drinks himself insensate, sleeps without dreaming, wakes to eyes red and swollen and a pillow damp and a pounding in his temples that's as familiar as yesterday. But as he lies there with his eyes closed, breathing deeply while he waits for the room to stop spinning and the nausea to subside, the scent of flowers assails him. It's only memory but it's visceral, real, and he lurches from the bed to lose the contents of his stomach in the bucket standing across the room, shivering and nearly sobbing once again.

He will find memories of her here, he realises; he will find memories of her everywhere. This is what it means to see the world diminished – to always be looking for some vestige of her but to only ever find those fragments; in the time after he'd rediscovered her, he had forgotten what it felt like to live in that world, or perhaps never truly known. And he will never be free of her memory, but that thought is as much comfort as it is a knife, when he realises he does not want to be. He wants another chance, another day or hour or even a minute, to say things he should have said and to right too many wrongs and to lose himself in her once last time. He wants the rest of their days, as the callow youth he'd been had once pledged heedlessly. He wants –

Wants but will never have, because she is dead and he has squandered whatever chances had been left to them.

At first he tells himself he drove her to it, but curled there on the floor, dry-heaving and trembling, he realises that is wrong. He may have pushed her, pushed and pushed until she fell, may have wounded her far more deeply than the marks she hid at her throat and bitterly called love-tokens, but though he surely had some part in driving her to this, it would have been her choice. And perhaps that thought would have been consolation once but all he can think of is her looking at him, eyes wide and wet, and her question shivering between them. _What else did I have to live for?_ she had asked once, and he cannot but think whatever drove her to this choice stemmed from the same question.

He drinks, and he sleeps, and if he dreams he mercifully does not remember.

But the bottle is no answer; he does not deserve the luxury of wine-soaked oblivion, and knows too well now how little it solves. And so he asks them to come together one last time in the captain's still-familiar office, and he tells them what he means to do, and watches as each of them in turn realises what it means.

"I'm going to Barcelona," he says, and he does not know if he means to Spain or to her or to something else, only that he cannot stay here. He does not know if some part of him still hopes that she lives, or if he is courting death or something else altogether, only that the reason does not matter as much as the need. He _must_ do this.

They look at him, his brothers, and though there would have been a time once when they would have ridden with him, that time is past. They have other duties, other obligations; they can never be again as they once were, and as much as it saddens him it steadies something inside him, firms his resolve. "I'm going," he repeats, the words implacable. "Whatever happened, I need to know."

They are his brothers, even now, and no matter how changed they all are they understand: this is goodbye.

\- x -

 _Anne,_ he hears, in the thump of hooves against the earth on the road south; _Anne,_ in the murmur of the wind; _Anne,_ the desperate plea in his dreams at night. _Anne,_ but she does not answer.

 _I'm coming,_ he thinks, for all that he dares not hope. _I'm coming,_ and, though he has no right to ask it, _wait for me._

 _Anne,_ but there is no reply.


End file.
